1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to hard material disintegration machines, and more particularly to a portable rock crusher and scarifier having a rotating arbor adaptable to crush, grind, scarify and mill material in-situ and on-site for building, maintaining, and reconditioning roadways and for road site development.
2. Background and Description of Prior Art
Rock crushers and scarifiers are essential for building, maintaining and reconditioning roads but have various inherent drawbacks including rapid arbor and tooling implement wear, they are either mobile or stationary but are generally not operable in both configurations, they have limited tooling implement mounting patterns and they typically cannot mill surfaces to depths below the surrounding frame structure.
Stationary rock crushers, even those that are movable, require material be transported from a source to the rock crusher for crushing, and thereafter the finished product must be transported to a use site, usually with dump trucks and the like. Two way transport of the raw and finished material increases costs, decreases efficiency and requires additional road maintenance equipment.
Mobile rock crushers may have various configurations including large highly specialized machines that move on crawler tracks or on rubberized wheel assemblies, and smaller vehicle supported machines. Large mobile rock crushers typically carry a rotating arbor having a plurality of tooling implements thereon at a position between the crawler track assemblies and the arbor is generally permanently interconnected with an integral power source. Smaller vehicle supported rock crushers are known to have an integral power source forward of a rotating arbor which places the machine's center of gravity forwardly necessitating large support vehicles to counteract the weight and leading to limited operator visibility which increases risk of accidents and injury.
Known stationary rock crushers and known mobile rock crushers are designed for crushing fractureable material such as rock and gravel and the like but are not well suited for the milling operations without undergoing significant customization. Further, known stationary and mobile rock crushers typically have a fixed geometry that limits how the machine is used, what type of raw material may be crushed and the characteristics of the finished product, such as size.
What is needed is a portable rock crusher and scarifier that reclaims, recycles, converts and mills a wide variety of materials in-situ. The apparatus must be attachable to a variety of road maintenance vehicles and be able to effectively mill and plane asphalt, concrete, and bedrock, crush and pulverize rocky material, as well as scarify surfaces and prepare roadbeds. Further, because not all materials can be crushed, pulverized, milled, or ground in the same way, the apparatus must be easily adjustable and adaptable to the particular site needs by changing impact tooling, arbor rotation and product sizing distances.
Our portable rock crusher and scarifier overcomes various of the aforementioned drawbacks and resolves various of the aforementioned needs by providing a rock crusher and scarifier that may be used in both mobile and stationary operations.
Our portable rock crusher and scarifier has a crusher frame defining a feed inlet, a discharge outlet and a crusher channel extending therebetween. An anvil weldment channel communicating with the crusher channel carries an anvil weldment having two adjacent vertically spaced anvils to enhance durability and the anvil weldment is adjustably positionable in the anvil channel to regulate the size of finished product. A rotating arbor defining plural “V” shaped axial keyways for mounting tooling implements is journaled by the crusher frame and extends transversely across the crusher channel. The arbor keyways each define plural spacedly arrayed threaded holes to engage with threaded connectors extending through the tooling implements and radially into the arbor. A power pack releasably connected to the crusher frame and operatively communicating with the arbor is carried spacedly rearward above the arbor to move the center of gravity rearward and improve operator visibility. Our portable rock crusher and scarifier is releasably mountable to a variety of road maintenance vehicles which provide the required forward movement to force-feed the rock crusher position the rock crusher and scarifier in an orientation allowing an operator to access and maintain the arbor as well as change tooling implements on-site, to adapt the rock crusher and scarifier to the on-site material being recycled and reclaimed. A canting mounting structure between the carrying vehicle and the power pack allows our rock crusher and scarifier to be canted, during operation, to maintain the side-to-side angulation of a roadway relative to horizontal which is known in the industry as the “super elevation” or “super” of the roadway.
Our invention does not reside in any one of the identified features individually but rather in the synergistic combination of all of its structures, which give rise to the functions necessarily flowing therefrom as hereinafter specified and claimed.